The owner seems occupied and I, clear of sight lines, now drop to my knees. I reach, blind, beneath a radiator still half-warm. I pull forth a handful. Paint chips, each flake no longer than a feather. My palm closes, careful not to crush even one. I thank the woman, praise her loot, swear I’ll be back, and, smuggling litter, jump into Krishna’s chariot. It, participatory, squeals off.

When he sees me sorting through my lead-based tea leaves, sees me tilting toward street lamps and stores’ neon, Krish, unbidden, ignites the overhead lamp. “Here we are!” I call.

“You are finding, good. What exactly are finding, szir?”

“We all signed this. One night, half-drunk after performing for each other, our works about Paradise, we piled downstairs, needing caffeine, we make a pact to live forever in and out of art, to visit one another’s podunk hometowns. Then each of us, using her yellow felt pen, let a single line spell all our names as one long, perfect, brand-new word, Mr. Krishna. —My head doesn’t hurt now, I feel ecstatic.

“Krishna, sir? How’d I guess that a woman would sweep it away by noon? How’d I understand our name was still tucked under there tonight only? How’d I know that, buddy?”

Came the calming word. “Veesion.”

II.

As one of their caretakers, I am taking care to save a record.

(Somebody has to.)

By now, my nerves are shot but the news is good: today, at last, my every dying one is safely dead.

—Right now, a Thursday, for the first time in over a decade, this very morning—sunny, slight breeze from the Northwest—my dry-cleaned funeral suit slid back into its closet, I am allowed to guildessly ask, “So, Hartley, buddy, how ‘bout an onion bagel? Sound good? Maybe squeeze those navel oranges for juice.” My last sick friend found peace in this very house, ten days back, upstairs, in an antique bed, inherited.

—This might not sound like much of an achievement, but oh and oy, is it ever! Maybe my rejoicing strikes you as a wee bit weird? I know only this: I can wake up and not wonder first thing, “Has the gasping started? Will they return his apartment’s security deposit? Which of his aunts did I forget to phone?”

Now … Where was I?

If you go down on the Titanic—the saga of your drowning becomes just one gust in the vacuum of a famous ship ending. The vessel’s destruction outranks your own. Who will see your last three air bubbles rising to the surface of that much-black ice water?

We have all been upstaged by the newsworthiness of our particular disaster. This is just one of the ways History snubs us.